Part 1. A Crack in the Smalti
“Come on, it’s not like I’m throwing you out… I just need some room. Some air. You understand, right?” Roman said, avoiding Yulia’s eyes as he absentmindedly sorted through pieces of colored glass on his worktable.
Yulia stood in the doorway of his “studio” — once a cramped storage closet, now a makeshift workshop they had painstakingly transformed together six months earlier. In her hands, she gripped a bag of felting wool. The smile on her face slowly faded, replaced by confusion.
“Room? Air?” she repeated, stepping inside. “Rom, we live in a three-bedroom Stalin-era apartment. The ceilings are three meters high. You’re telling me you don’t have enough air? Or am I breathing too loudly for you?”
With a flash of irritation, Roman set down his glass cutters. The metal struck the tabletop with a sharp clink. That sound had always grated on Yulia’s nerves, but she had learned to put up with it. He’s an artist, she used to remind herself. A mosaicist is not some ordinary middle manager. This is art.
“It’s not about square footage, Yul. It’s about… the atmosphere.” He finally turned to face her. His usually calm expression now carried a look of condescending distaste, as if he were explaining something painfully simple to a child. “Domestic life is suffocating me. The same thing every day: work, home, your little felt projects, soup on a schedule. I can feel routine growing over my talent like mold. I need, you know… a blank page.”
“A blank page,” Yulia repeated slowly. “And in your version of that blank page, I’m not supposed to exist?”
“I want to live alone for a little while. A month, maybe two. You have to understand — I need to finish the mural for the business center lobby. The client is brutal. I need silence, concentration. And you’re always around. The kettle, the phone, your mother calling. It throws me off my rhythm.”
Silence settled over the room.
Yulia stared at the man she had spent five years with. At his carefully groomed beard. At the tiny cuts across his hands from broken glass. At the sweater she had picked out for him just last week. He looked like a stranger. Not someone close to her anymore, but something flat and artificial, like a cardboard cutout.
“So in your mind,” she said, her voice sharpening, “I’m supposed to pack my things and go stay with my mother? Clear the field so you can create freely in my grandmother’s apartment?”
“Why do you have to put it so harshly? ‘Go stay’…” Roman reached toward her as if to touch her shoulder, but Yulia stepped back. “Just spend some time there. Elena Sergeyevna will be glad to have you. And I’ll… reset.”
“Reset. Right.”
Something cold and unpleasant tightened inside Yulia. It wasn’t pain. It was instinct. The instinct of a teacher who could always tell when children were lying straight to her face. Roman was lying now. And doing it badly. This wasn’t about art.
“I’ll think about it,” she said dryly, then turned and left the room, closing the door behind her with deliberate care.
Roman exhaled, ran a hand through his hair, and smirked.
She bought it. Where’s she going to go anyway, that pathetic intellectual?
His phone buzzed on the table.
A message from Inga lit up the screen:
So, artist, did you clear the territory? I already picked out the wine.
Part 2. The Glue Beneath the Lie
“Man, stop stressing. Women are like modeling clay. At first they’re stiff, they crack, but warm them up a little and you can shape them however you want,” Vitalik laughed, taking a swig of beer.
They were sitting in a craft beer bar. Vitalik, Roman’s childhood friend, had divorced six months earlier and now styled himself as some kind of expert on women and freedom. His worldview was simple: a woman should know her place, and a man should take whatever he can from life.
“She’s gone cold,” Roman complained, turning his glass in his hands. “Looks at me like an X-ray machine. No tears, no screaming. Just said, ‘I’ll think about it,’ and now she drifts around the place like a ghost.”
“That’s strategy,” Vitalik declared confidently. “She’s trying to make you feel sorry for her. Playing the victim. Just don’t bend. You need the apartment, don’t you? You do. Your studio is set up there, right? So where are you supposed to go now, some rental place? With your stones and glue?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Roman muttered. “The apartment’s in a good location, right downtown. Her grandmother lives at the dacha year-round anyway, doesn’t care. And Yulka… well, she can stay with her mother. Her mother doesn’t like me, sure, but she’ll take her daughter in.”
“Exactly!” Vitalik slapped the table. “You’re talented. You need muses, inspiration — not borscht and conversations about macramé classes. By the way, how’s Inga?”
At the mention of Inga, Roman’s face immediately brightened. Inga worked as the administrator at their art studio. Loud, sharp, always dressed in leather and metal studs. The complete opposite of Yulia, who was soft, warm, and domestic. Inga was exciting. Inga never asked whether he had bought bread. Inga asked when they were going out clubbing.
“Inga’s fire. She’s waiting for me to ‘sort things out.’ She wants to move in with me. Says the energy in her rental place is bad and kills her creativity.”
“Well then sort it out. Be a man. Tell Yulia, ‘I’m tired, I’m leaving… into myself.’ Let her get lost.”
At that same moment, on the other side of the city, Yulia sat in a café with Roman’s brother, Denis. Denis was nothing like Roman: grounded, calm, an auto mechanic with steady hands and honest eyes.
“Has Roma completely lost his mind?” Denis muttered, stirring sugar into his coffee. “Yul, I didn’t want to say anything. I thought maybe it would pass. But for the past week he’s been whining to Mom that you’re suffocating him.”
“Suffocating him?” Yulia let out a bitter laugh. “I’ve been paying for his life for the last three months while he had no commissions. I bought that Italian smalti with my vacation money. And I’m the one suffocating him?”
“It’s not just the art thing,” Denis said hesitantly, glancing out the window. “I heard him on the phone with someone, all sweet and syrupy. ‘Kitten,’ ‘baby.’ I don’t think he talks to clients like that.”
Something inside Yulia tightened into a block of ice.
The puzzle pieces locked into place. Reset. Personal space. The growing distance. It was all painfully obvious.
“So there’s another woman,” she whispered.
“Looks like it. And Mom knows too. Yesterday she said, ‘Romochka needs a woman who feels like a celebration, and Yulia is just everyday life.’ Can you imagine?”
“A woman who feels like a celebration…” Yulia straightened in her chair. Instead of tears, a hard, icy fury began to glow in her eyes. “So he’s tired of ordinary days? Fine. Let’s give him a holiday.”
“Yul, just don’t do anything stupid. Throw him out and be done with it.”
“No, Denis. Just kicking him out would be too easy. He wants a clean slate? He’ll get one. So clean it’ll blind him.”
Part 3. The Pattern of Collapse
“I’m telling you, son, you have every right! You’ve put so much into that apartment! The renovations, the bathroom tile — that was all your work!” his mother’s voice rang so loudly through the phone that Roman had to pull it away from his ear.
He was lying on the couch in the living room, feet hanging over the armrest. Yulia wasn’t home — she was teaching at her center.
“Mom, that’s just talk. The apartment is in Grandma’s name.”
“So what? She’s old. She doesn’t care anymore. Are you registered there? No. But you live there! You’re the husband! By any moral law, half of it should be yours. Don’t you dare leave. Let her leave. She has her mother. And there’s no space for you at our place with all your boxes. Besides, I never liked that Yulia. So arrogant. A teacher, as if that means anything.”
Roman ended the call. His mother’s support gave him confidence. Really, why should he leave? He had turned that “old lady’s hole” into something beautiful. The mosaic backsplash in the kitchen was a masterpiece. He had leveled the walls. It was his home.
The front door clicked. Yulia was back.
Roman didn’t move, just kept scrolling on his phone.
She walked into the room still wearing her coat, handbag in hand. She looked strange — too composed.
“Roma, we need to talk,” she said evenly.
“Again? Yul, I already told you — I need time. Why are you starting this again?” he muttered lazily.
“I spoke to Valentina Ignatyevna. Grandma.”
Roman tensed, though he tried not to show it.
“And how is the esteemed old lady?”
“Excellent. She asked when you’d be moving out.”
Roman bolted upright.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean exactly that. I told her we’re getting divorced.”
“You… what?” Roman jumped to his feet. “What are you talking about? What divorce? I just asked for a pause!”
“A pause so you could spread Inga’s legs in my bed?” Yulia said it as calmly as if she were commenting on the weather.
Roman froze.
The air in the room thickened. Fear, cold and sticky, slid down his spine. How did she know?
“You’re insane,” he hissed, trying to attack his way out of the corner. “What Inga? You’re paranoid! Sick with jealousy! You’ve lost your mind!”
“Don’t shout.” Yulia walked over to the table and picked up the sketch for his future mural. “It’s beautiful. Rebirth of the Phoenix. Very symbolic.”
“Put that down!” Roman shouted. “Don’t you dare touch my things!”
“Your things?” Yulia lifted her eyes to him. There was no love in them anymore. Only contempt so sharp and absolute that Roman felt like an insect pinned under glass. “All right. Then let’s talk about your things.”
Part 4. Smalti Soaked in Poison
“You think I’m going to put up with your hysterics?” Roman snapped, going on the offensive. He could feel control slipping away, and it enraged him. “I’m an artist! I earn—”
“YOU DON’T EARN A DAMN THING!” Yulia suddenly screamed.
The force of it was so violent that Roman actually flinched and slammed his thigh into the edge of the table.
In an instant, every trace of her calm mask disappeared.
“You pathetic, self-obsessed parasite!” Yulia advanced on him, and to his own shock, Roman found himself backing away. “For three years you’ve been living off me! ‘I have no inspiration,’ ‘the client stiffed me,’ ‘I need money for materials’! I paid your bills, your food, your stupid shirts! And now you thought you’d bring your mistress here? Into my grandmother’s apartment?”
“Shut your mouth!” Roman shouted over her, his face twisted with fury. “You’re greedy! You never understood me!”
“Greedy?” Yulia laughed — a hard, ugly laugh. She grabbed a jar of expensive Italian smalti from the table. “I’m greedy? Fifty thousand rubles a kilo for colored glass! That came out of my vacation savings, you bastard!”
Roman went pale.
“Don’t you dare,” he whispered.
Yulia hurled the jar to the floor.
Not at the wall, but straight down at her own feet.
The glass container didn’t shatter, but the lid flew off, and the precious cubes of smalti — bright as scattered gemstones — spilled across the parquet with a cheerful rattling sound.
“Yulia! You’re crazy!” Roman shrieked, lunging to gather them up. “That’s money!”
“It’s TRASH!” Yulia kicked a handful of the cubes under the sofa. “You wanted a blank page? You wanted change? Then here it is! GET OUT! RIGHT NOW!”
“I’m not going anywhere!” Roman straightened, clutching a fistful of smalti. “I have rights here… I mean, I should… my tools are here! I’ll call the police!”
“Call them!” Yulia stepped closer until she was almost chest to chest with him. “Go ahead. Tell them how you’ve been living here without any legal claim. Grandma will be here in an hour. With her friend’s son. He’s a retired colonel and a former boxer. Want to discuss your rights with him?”
Roman swallowed. He knew exactly who she meant. Uncle Borya. A man built like a wardrobe.
“You’re bluffing,” he said, but his voice had lost its certainty.
“TRY ME!” Yulia roared so loudly his ears rang. “You have twenty minutes to pack. Anything left here after that goes down the trash chute. Along with your delusions of grandeur. And everything I paid for stays here, because it’s mine!”
Roman stared at his wife and barely recognized her. Where had the soft, warm Yulia gone? The woman standing in front of him now was an enemy — dangerous, unpredictable, ready to destroy him. For the first time, he was truly afraid. Not for his belongings, but for himself. There was a promise in her eyes — not of physical violence, but of total humiliation.
“All right…” he muttered, retreating toward the studio door. “I’ll go. But you’ll regret this. You’ll come running back when you realize what you lost. And it’ll be too late.”
“TIME STARTS NOW!” Yulia shouted, looking pointedly at her watch.
Roman stuffed the most valuable things he could grab into bags: his laptop, sketches, expensive cutting tools. Clothes were crammed in carelessly. Underwear didn’t matter — the tools did. He felt humiliated, crushed, but his anger at Yulia mixed with an overwhelming urge to get as far away from her as possible.
Fifteen minutes later, he stood on the landing with two suitcases and a box.
“Keys,” Yulia demanded from the doorway.
He hurled the keyring at her.
“Choke on your precious apartment, rat.”
The door slammed in his face. The lock clicked shut.
Roman stood there in the silence of the stairwell for a moment, then pulled out his phone and called Inga.
“Baby, it’s done. I left. I’m free. Yeah, there was a scene, she’s hysterical. I’m coming to you. What? What do you mean, ‘not now’? Inga, I’m standing here with my bags… Hello?”
He stared blankly at the dark screen.
The number you are trying to reach is currently unavailable.
Part 5. The Final Pattern
Two days passed.
Roman had been sleeping at Vitalik’s place, on a narrow kitchen sofa that reeked of tobacco. Life on a “clean slate” turned out to be deeply uncomfortable. Inga disappeared the moment she found out Roman was now basically a homeless man with a suitcase full of stones. Apparently her “creative aura” did not tolerate men with problems.
It doesn’t matter, he told himself. I’ll go back and get the rest of my things. The stone-cutting machine is still there. My main mural is almost finished — it’s worth a fortune. I’ll sue for my share. I’ll prove that my investment in the renovations gives me a claim.
He borrowed Vitalik’s van so he could haul away everything he still considered his, including furniture, since they had chosen it together and that, in his mind, made it his too.
Roman drove to the building full of righteous confidence. In his pocket was a duplicate key Yulia didn’t know about — he had made it secretly a month earlier, just in case.
He climbed the stairs, heart beating faster with anticipation. He was about to walk in, calm and self-assured, and reclaim what rightfully belonged to him as a genius.
The key slid smoothly into the lock.
It turned.
Roman pushed the door open.
And stopped dead.
His mind refused to process what he saw. He expected the familiar hallway, the coat rack, the mirror.
Instead, there was a concrete shell.
Empty.
A hollow, echoing emptiness.
Roman stepped inside. The sound of his shoes bounced off the bare walls.
There was nothing. No furniture. No light fixtures. Not even wallpaper — it had been ripped away in strips. The laminate flooring was gone too. Only raw, dusty screed remained underfoot.
He rushed into the kitchen.
His pride and joy — the mosaic backsplash — was gone. The wall had been hacked back to rough brick. Someone, almost certainly hired workers, had mercilessly torn away every inch of his creation with power tools. Broken bits of smalti lay in the corner like dull construction debris.
He ran to the room that had been his studio.
Empty.
The curtainless window stared blankly out at the street. On the windowsill lay a single sheet of paper.
Roman picked it up with trembling fingers.
It was a copy of a sales agreement.
Dated the day before.
He read the words without understanding them at first. Seller: Valentina Ignatyevna, Yulia’s grandmother. Buyer: StroyInvestGroup LLC. Property transferred for major reconstruction and redesign into office space.
At the bottom, in broad marker strokes, Yulia had added a handwritten note:
YOU WANTED A BLANK PAGE? START THERE.
P.S. All your “tile” and mosaic went out as construction waste. I’ll mail you the bill for debris removal. The smalti you left behind, I sold to resellers. The money paid for the movers and demolition crew. No need to thank me for your fresh start.
“THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING!” Roman screamed.
His voice ricocheted off the concrete walls and struck back at him.
He lunged toward the spot where his cutting machine had once stood.
Nothing.
Only the bolt holes in the floor remained.
Then he remembered the mural — Phoenix.
Gone.
He had nothing left. Literally nothing. The apartment no longer existed in any recognizable form, and the renovation he had cherished and treated like a masterpiece had been reduced to dust.
A stocky man in a hard hat appeared in the doorway.
“Hey, you. Who are you?” he barked. “This is a construction site. No unauthorized entry.”
“I… I lived here…” Roman stammered, sinking onto the filthy floor.
“Used to, maybe. Now it’s going to be office space. Move it before I call security. Idiots must’ve forgotten to lock the door.”
Roman stumbled out of the building like a drunk man. The sun was shining, bright and shameless. The world around him went on living as if nothing had happened.
Yulia hadn’t just thrown him out.
She had erased him.
She had destroyed every trace of him, every surface he had touched, every thing he had treated as proof of his worth. She had poured all her fury, all her cold determination, into turning his “palace” back into a cave — and then sold the cave along with everything tied to it.
He took out his phone, intending to call his mother, complain, find at least a drop of sympathy. But his finger froze above the screen.
What was he supposed to tell her?
That the “schoolteacher” had outplayed the “genius artist”?
That he was now homeless, without tools, without a studio, without his masterpiece?
Roman looked down at his hands.
An artist’s hands.
They were trembling.
And then the truth hit him with merciless clarity: he hadn’t underestimated Yulia as a person. He had underestimated the force of a woman’s rage — rage that can be as soft as water, until it becomes a tsunami strong enough to wipe out cities.
He had wanted change.
He got it.
He glanced one last time at the third-floor windows. Behind the glass, workers were already tearing away the last remains of his former life.
Roman spat onto the asphalt and walked back toward Vitalik’s van.
He had nowhere left to go except backward — into the past he had been so eager to escape.
And the future he had imagined for himself was gone.
